Ten percent of any population has sensorineural hearing loss. Of that 10%, about 4-5% get sufficient benefit from a hearing aid. The remainder is impaired in business, family and personal life. With the aging population, hearing impairment is increased.
Various hearing aid devices and methods have been developed to help those with hearing problems, such as behind-the-ear or in-the-ear hearing aids. However, such hearing devices suffer from problems such as wearing discomfort, user embarrassment or discrimination due to visibility by others, failures of mechanical parts, undesired background noise or noise resulting from the sudden movement or jarring of the user's head, misalignment of parts by the user (e.g., when a part of the hearing aid is positioned by the user in the ear canal), and loss or misplacement.
Thus there is a need for a hearing system which efficiently and effectively overcomes the above mentioned problems. It is to such a hearing system, and methods for making and using the same, that the present invention is directed.